Free Cisco 350-801 Actual Exam Questions - Question 13 Discussion

It’s C for me. Balanced mode definitely handles both load balancing and failover automatically, which is a key feature. Active/standby gives you a hot standby ready to take over but doesn’t spread the user load across nodes. D’s incorrect because balanced mode does provide load balancing, not just failover. Also, active/standby isn’t just standby—it’s always on, so it can switch over instantly. This distinction fits how Cisco usually designs their HA setups for IM and Presence.

C/D? I’m stuck between C and D. C says balanced mode does both load balancing and failover, with active/standby just failover but no load balancing, which sounds right. But D seems plausible since it says balanced mode doesn’t do load balancing, only failover, which matches some setups where load balancing is done outside IM & Presence. The key difference is whether balanced mode actually shares the user load or not. I’m guessing Cisco’s docs lean towards balanced mode doing both, so maybe C is the better fit here.

D imo, balanced mode must have user failover but no load balancing, standby just standby.

Option C seems solid because balanced mode handles user load and failover actively, while active/standby just keeps a standby ready without balancing the load. That matches what I’ve seen in docs.

C for sure, balanced mode does load balancing, standby doesn’t.